4 ms·

A side issue that all those funny links have is they always randomly intermix requiring years of experience and they won't hire anyone without a degree or years

by VLM 10y ago

A side issue that all those funny links have is they always randomly intermix requiring years of experience and they won't hire anyone without a degree or years of experience, which mostly fake claims about hiring anyone off the street... who also happens to have a Mech Eng degree and be willing to take $1/hr more than McDonalds and given those criteria not be involved in drugs or prison. And as a side note it stereotypically required in all employer anecdotes about alcohol and drug abuse to point out that the drunks are trivially detectable as non-functioning but the painkiller addicts are extremely high functioning and indistinguishable in performance from sober people yet we have to discriminate against them anyway, just for fun apparently.

eropple 10y ago
From experience: it's not that difficult to tell from very brief interaction when someone is drunk. It's a lot harder to tell when someone is using narcotics to the point where you can't trust them with dangerous machinery and the lives of their fellow workers. If you think this is "discrimination", I very strongly question whether you've any experience at all dealing with semi-functional narcotics abusers. Because your superficial dismissiveness does not track with the seriousness of the problem.
- eli_gottlieb 10y ago
  I don't think narcotics are the issue. Nobody wants to hire an addict, yeah. The trouble is, as he said, trying to get a trained mechanical engineer to live and work in an area with few other employers, for $1/hour more than McDonalds. That's just not a very good return on the skillset investment.
  - eropple 10y ago
    The employer who said he wouldn't hire narcotics users is not hiring mechanical engineers, though, he's hiring factory workers for steel-drawing machines. They're operators and tradesmen, not engineers. It doesn't require a degree--it requires the ability to learn and the ability to not mis-handle machines to the (potentially fatal) detriment of your coworkers. Which narcotics (and other drugs) kind of screw with.
    - VLM 10y ago
      "This work takes years of training" The ability to buckle down and study something as a project for a couple years is very expensive in employees. You can hire an engineer who can definitely do it, or a non-STEM bachelors grad who might be able to do it, or take your chances with a kid off the street. $12/hr is probably not going to find that caliber of employee. Some google work indicates McDonalds is paying a minimum of $10/hr nationwide as of this year. For an extra two bucks the employer thinks he's going to get Warner Von Braun himself... in a city where the average job pays $18/hr. Good luck with that. The trades don't get $12/hr. Millwright average pay across the nation including non-union jobs is twice that at $24/hr. (edited to add, I accidentally deleted a paragraph claiming that three millwrights could trivially outproduce perhaps nine general laborers, which makes the guys claims about expense especially weird. Its very expensive to employ the far left corner of the bell curve) Dude is asking for vaguely millwright caliber of employee for half price and is shocked, shocked I tell you, that all he's getting is drug addicts trying to keep their unemployment benefits going. I can ask all day for subcontractors to work under me for $8/hr and the lack of serious applicants tells absolutely nothing useful about the software development field or the social problems of the USA. Thats the fundamental problem of this story. "I only pay peanuts and I'm only getting monkeys, so this is a national crisis worthy of national coverage" No, not really.
      - x0x0 10y ago
        Exactly. Part of creating a viable business is figuring out a way to charge enough to pay for the workers you need. Though whining to reporters turns out to be free. If employees started at $20/hour, perhaps with paid training for 3 months at $12/hour, I confidently predict he would have zero trouble hiring. Either he needs to raise prices, raise the productivity of his workers, or pay himself less. Maybe all of the above. Common symptoms of manufacturers who "can't hire" are a lack of interest in training people and whining that local tech schools aren't churning out workers (on the workers' dime!) with the exact skills they want, who will jump for $12/hour. I reiterate the parallels with the tech industry.

by VLM 10y ago

eropple 10y ago

From experience: it's not that difficult to tell from very brief interaction when someone is drunk. It's a lot harder to tell when someone is using narcotics to the point where you can't trust them with dangerous machinery and the lives of their fellow workers. If you think this is "discrimination", I very strongly question whether you've any experience at all dealing with semi-functional narcotics abusers. Because your superficial dismissiveness does not track with the seriousness of the problem.

eli_gottlieb 10y ago
I don't think narcotics are the issue. Nobody wants to hire an addict, yeah. The trouble is, as he said, trying to get a trained mechanical engineer to live and work in an area with few other employers, for $1/hour more than McDonalds. That's just not a very good return on the skillset investment.
- eropple 10y ago
  The employer who said he wouldn't hire narcotics users is not hiring mechanical engineers, though, he's hiring factory workers for steel-drawing machines. They're operators and tradesmen, not engineers. It doesn't require a degree--it requires the ability to learn and the ability to not mis-handle machines to the (potentially fatal) detriment of your coworkers. Which narcotics (and other drugs) kind of screw with.
  - VLM 10y ago
    "This work takes years of training" The ability to buckle down and study something as a project for a couple years is very expensive in employees. You can hire an engineer who can definitely do it, or a non-STEM bachelors grad who might be able to do it, or take your chances with a kid off the street. $12/hr is probably not going to find that caliber of employee. Some google work indicates McDonalds is paying a minimum of $10/hr nationwide as of this year. For an extra two bucks the employer thinks he's going to get Warner Von Braun himself... in a city where the average job pays $18/hr. Good luck with that. The trades don't get $12/hr. Millwright average pay across the nation including non-union jobs is twice that at $24/hr. (edited to add, I accidentally deleted a paragraph claiming that three millwrights could trivially outproduce perhaps nine general laborers, which makes the guys claims about expense especially weird. Its very expensive to employ the far left corner of the bell curve) Dude is asking for vaguely millwright caliber of employee for half price and is shocked, shocked I tell you, that all he's getting is drug addicts trying to keep their unemployment benefits going. I can ask all day for subcontractors to work under me for $8/hr and the lack of serious applicants tells absolutely nothing useful about the software development field or the social problems of the USA. Thats the fundamental problem of this story. "I only pay peanuts and I'm only getting monkeys, so this is a national crisis worthy of national coverage" No, not really.
    - x0x0 10y ago
      Exactly. Part of creating a viable business is figuring out a way to charge enough to pay for the workers you need. Though whining to reporters turns out to be free. If employees started at $20/hour, perhaps with paid training for 3 months at $12/hour, I confidently predict he would have zero trouble hiring. Either he needs to raise prices, raise the productivity of his workers, or pay himself less. Maybe all of the above. Common symptoms of manufacturers who "can't hire" are a lack of interest in training people and whining that local tech schools aren't churning out workers (on the workers' dime!) with the exact skills they want, who will jump for $12/hour. I reiterate the parallels with the tech industry.